The Billionaire's Embrace (The Silver Cross Club) (27 page)

To my surprise, she picked up on the third ring. “Carter? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, puzzled. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, you usually just send a text message,” she said. “But, I mean, I’m happy to talk to you even if it’s not an emergency. How was your party last night?”

“We got him,” I said. “He spilled it. Everything. I talked to my contact earlier, and they got everything on tape. Every word.”

“That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Congratulations. I know how much time you’ve spent working on that case.”

“Yes, well,” I said. “I lied to his face and told him that his secrets were safe with me. They weren’t, of course.”

“You’re feeling guilty?” she asked. “Don’t. Obviously I don’t really know what he did, but if the FBI is investigating him, I’m sure he’s done all sorts of terrible things. He probably lied to a lot of people, right? So if you have to lie a little in order to catch him, that’s okay.”

I let out a slow breath and closed my eyes. Regan’s absolution, for whatever reason, lightened the load I had been carrying on my shoulders since the night before. “I know. You’re right. It’s just that I try so hard to be honest in all of my dealings.”

“I know,” she said. “And you are, right? With people who deserve it. He didn’t deserve it. This doesn’t make you a bad person! Do you want me to come over tonight? I think I should. You need some distracting. We can make dinner and, you know.”

I grinned. Regan, for all her sensual abandon in bed, was completely unable to talk about sex in anything more than vague euphemisms. “Oh, I know,” I said. “Tell me what you’re wearing under your clothes.”

“I’m at work,” she said, and I could
hear
her blushing. “I have to go. I’ll come over as soon as I’m done with work, okay?”

“I’ll be thinking about your pussy the entire time,” I said.

She made a strangled sound and hung up, and I laughed in my empty office, eternally delighted by the way she responded to me.

As soon as I ended the call, my phone buzzed again. I answered without looking at the screen, assuming that Regan had forgotten something and was calling me back.

“The prodigal son finally answers his phone,” a voice said.

It wasn’t Regan. It was my mother.

Oh, Christ. As fond as I was of my mother, she was the last person I felt like dealing with at the moment.

I cradled my face in one hand, bracing myself for the conversation that was about to ensue. “Hello, Mother,” I said.

“Yes, hello yourself,” she said. “I’m shocked that you’re still alive and haven’t succumbed to some exotic disease.”

Was that a dig about Regan? But my mother didn’t know that I had started seeing Regan again. “I’ve been busy with work,” I said. “Mergers. Hostile takeovers. You know how it is.”

“You wouldn’t know a hostile takeover if it bit you on the posterior,” she said tartly. “Carolina tells me you’re back with that dull girl.”

Oh,
Christ
. Of course they were conspiring against me. “I’ve never dated a ‘dull girl,’” I said.

She made an impatient noise. “You know who I’m referring to. You brought her to dinner, for some incomprehensible reason. I thought we agreed that she wasn’t a suitable partner for you.”

I rolled my eyes, grateful that she couldn’t see me. My mother had little patience for eye-rolling. “No,
you
decided that, with no input from me whatsoever. And yes, Carolina told you the truth. Although why the two of you feel the need to discuss me behind my back, I’ll never understand.”

“Well, how else are we supposed to figure out what you’re up to?” she asked. “After all, it’s not like you ever call me or come to visit, and me alone in this big apartment—”

“Yes, all right, I’m very inconsiderate and neglectful, I agree,” I said. “I’ll have dinner with you tomorrow night, if that will somehow ease the pangs of your widowhood.”

“How kind of you to offer,” she said. “I accept. And bring that girl with you.”

“And subject her to your disapproval? I don’t think so,” I said. “I happen to like her quite a bit, and I don’t want you scaring her off.”

“I would never,” my mother said. “I’m a delight. All of the best people agree. If you’re seeing her again, you’re obviously serious about her. I want another look at her. Maybe there was something I missed, the first time.”

I sighed. If I put her off now, she would just keep bothering me about it until I gave in. But Regan had been so unhappy after her first meeting with my mother that I had little desire to ask her to do it again. “We’ll see,” I said. “I’ll mention it to her. I’m not making any guarantees, though.”

“So I’ll see you both tomorrow night at 6:30,” she said, as though I hadn’t spoken. “Wonderful. Don’t worry about bringing anything. All my love.”

And then she hung up before I could protest further.

I took my phone away from my ear and stared at it as though it was a junior executive who had just fumbled his first merger. My mother really was becoming impossible to deal with in her old age. I would have to be sure to tell her that.

I set my phone down and scrubbed my hands over my face. On the upside, I wasn’t angsting over Hackett any more. On the downside, I would have to ask Regan to brave the dragon’s den again, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t be pleased.

I strategically waited until after we had made dinner and made love, and were lying together in bed in the afterglow, Regan resting with her head on my chest. I stroked her hair and said, “I spoke with my mother today.”

She stretched her legs out and rubbed her cheek against my sternum. “Oh?”

“She wants us to have dinner with her tomorrow night,” I said.

Regan went very still, and then she sat up and stared down at me, expression unreadable. “What?”

“Look, I know,” I said. “She can be... difficult. But she’s my mother, and I love her despite her foibles, and it would mean a great deal to me if the two of you were able to get along. And she specifically requested that I bring you. She told me that she might have misjudged you the first time you met.”

Regan made a humming noise. “I don’t know,” she said.

“If she’s truly awful, we’ll leave,” I said. “I won’t tolerate her treating you poorly. But if you would just give her a chance—”

“Oh, how can I refuse when you look at me like that?” Regan asked, and covered her face with both hands.

My sweet girl. I drew her hands away and kissed her until she was smiling again.

* * *

T
he next evening, we arrived at my mother’s a few minutes late. It was a deliberate move on my part: I wanted to assert my independence, and remind my mother that I while I would always be her son, I was no longer a child, and no longer required to march in lockstep with her notions of propriety. If I didn’t feel like showing up to dinner on time, I damn well wouldn’t.

She was waiting for us when we exited the elevator, dressed relatively casually in a pantsuit and minimal jewelry. I raised one eyebrow, surprised. I had half-expected her to be dressed to the nines in an effort to intimidate Regan as much as possible. Instead, she seemed to have gone in the opposite direction.

“Wonderful to see you again, my dear,” my mother said, giving Regan a firm handshake, and only then turned to me to give me a hug and accept the kiss I planted on her cheek. I glanced at Regan and saw that she looked surprised and pleased. Already off to a good start, then.

My mother led us into the dining room, where the table was set with the everyday china, for use with family instead of guests. Even the flower arrangement at the center of the table was subdued: a simple array of pink tulip buds. She was making an effort, then—but for what purpose? I found it hard to believe that my mother would do anything without some ulterior motive. Was she planning to set Regan at ease, then corner her and demand that she steer me into politics? Would she offer to pay Regan some large sum of money if she agreed to never see me again?

God, I was being paranoid. Maybe my mother was simply trying to be
nice
, although the idea was so foreign that it was difficult for me not to automatically reject it as anathema.

“I’m not sure what you prefer to drink, dear,” my mother said to Regan. “I have white wine and red, and an assortment of hard liquors, and soda, if you’re a teetotaler, although I can’t imagine anyone could possibly be so dull.”

“Um, white wine is good,” Regan said. “Thank you.”

An unsophisticated drink, my mother would be thinking:
real
wine aficionados drank red. But she simply said, “Of course,” and went off toward the kitchen.

I gave Regan an encouraging smile, and squeezed her hand. “Not so bad, right?”

She let out a breath and smiled weakly. “I guess not. Carter, I never know what to say to her. I must seem like such a bumpkin.”

“Then fuck her,” I said lightly, and was rewarded with Regan’s wide eyes and startled laugh.

My mother returned with a bottle of white wine in one hand and a bottle of my favorite Scotch in the other. She poured drinks for the three of us, and then I stood and helped her into her chair. Old-fashioned, maybe, but my mother appreciated the chivalry, and it was a simple gesture that inoculated me from a lecture about how nobody had manners anymore.

Carla, the maid, brought the food in shortly, and I smiled at her in thanks as she set my plate before me. In keeping with the apparent theme of the evening, the food was simple—chicken and vegetables—albeit elegantly plated and impeccably cooked. My mother would never serve a meal that was less than world-class.

“So, Regan,” my mother said, “tell me again how you and Carter met. I don’t seem to recall.”

That was a polite fiction, of course. She hadn’t asked, the last time we were here. She hadn’t asked Regan a single question, actually, and in retrospect, I didn’t understand why I had allowed her to be so rude. I was distracted, maybe, or so desperate for Regan and my mother to get along that I willfully ignored any evidence that their meeting was going less than splendidly.

It was a good sign, then, that my mother was taking an interest; but I wished she had opened with a different question.

Regan, poor thing, looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. “Well, um,” she said, and took a hasty sip of her wine. “I was—we met at my job.”

“Yes, dear, and what was that?” my mother asked blandly. Surely she saw how uncomfortable Regan was.

Regan straightened her spine and looked my mother straight in the eye. “I was working as a cocktail waitress,” she said. “Carter was one of my customers.”

“I see,” my mother said. “And are you still employed in that... profession?”

“No, I quit that job. Now I’m working as a legal secretary,” Regan said.

“A secretary,” my mother repeated. “Well, I suppose that’s a step up from a cocktail waitress, heaven forbid. We’ll have to find you more suitable employment. A mere
secretary
is no match for my son.”

I set down my fork, preparing to step in. I was angry that my mother had made such a pretense of being humble and welcoming, and yet was being just as unkind to Regan as she had before. Regan was my guest, and my
girlfriend
; I wouldn’t tolerate her being spoken to like that.

But before I could open my mouth, Regan spoke. “Look, Angie,” she said, hot color in her cheeks, “I know you don’t like me, and that I’m not the person you would have chosen for Carter. But it’s not up to you, and you don’t get to treat me like crap just because you wish I would fall off the face of the earth. So please knock it off with the condescension. I’m not as dumb as you think, and I am in fact aware of when you’re insulting me.”

I stared at her, surprised and impressed. I hadn’t thought she would stand up to my mother like that—but it wasn’t the first time that Regan had surprised me, and I doubted it would be the last. It was part of what I loved about her.

“Well,” my mother said. She set down her napkin and gave Regan a considering look. I was prepared for her to give Regan a thorough dressing-down, and for me to have to swoop into action and end the evening prematurely; but instead, she said, “I suppose I was wrong about you. I told Carter that you didn’t have any fire, but it seems that you do.”

Regan looked as startled as I felt. She must have been expecting my mother’s wrath as well. “Oh,” she said. “Is that a good thing?”

My mother looked at Regan down the length of her nose. “Of course it is,” she said. “How can you be a politician’s wife with no fire?”

This again. I leaned my head against one hand and said, “Mother. Regan isn’t my wife. And I’m not going to be a politician.”

“Yes, we’ll see,” my mother said, with the smug look of a woman who was accustomed to getting her way. She turned back to Regan. “A woman needs backbone to get by in life. Are you interested in the law, then? Criminal justice? We’ll have to get you some type of formal certification. A paralegal is far more respectable. Have you considered further schooling?”

“I was thinking about maybe being a lawyer,” Regan said.

My mother’s eyes lit up. “You don’t say.”

I groaned and buried my head in my hands.

“None of that, Carter,” my mother said. “Eat your food in silence like a good boy. Regan and I have many things to discuss.”

Amused, I did as I was told, and finished my dinner while my mother grilled Regan about her current job, her previous experience working in a law office, her night classes, her boss, and her career ambitions. Poor Regan would be enrolled in law school by the end of the evening. In a way, I was glad that my mother was pushing her. Regan had too little faith in her own abilities, and I didn’t feel that it was my place to hassle her about her long-term career goals. Maybe Regan would respond well to my mother’s nagging. Stranger things had happened.

After our plates were taken away in preparation for dessert, Regan excused herself. As soon as she had left the room, my mother turned to me and said, “You’ve made up your mind, then.”

I knew what she was asking me. “Yes.”

“Very well,” my mother said, and sighed. “It’s true that she isn’t the girl I would have chosen for you. But if this is what you want, I’ll do my best to like her.”